


Shatter Capability

by Nevcolleil



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hopeful Ending, alternate season 2 ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 18:43:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15249645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/pseuds/Nevcolleil
Summary: Sometimes I think it's kinder to take a man's whole world than to take some small part of him.'Cause if the world is gone - there can be no hole in it, gaping where that small part used to be.





	Shatter Capability

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I do not know where this supersized helping of angst came from this evening... But here it is, and it demanded to be released. If you trust me not to lead you blindly anywhere I can't bring you back from, read on. If you'd like, I have summarized the angst in this in the end notes.
> 
> 2) My feelings on Macdalton are widely known. And this can be read as inexplicitly referencing that - or perhaps leading up to it. But it can also be read as showcasing the very literal canon of Mac and Jack's relationship, which is itself loving and demonstrative.
> 
> 3) My apologies if this makes little sense in some places. I was up exorcising this demon way past my bedtime. My apologies also if it makes too much sense :p Mac is an angsty individual, if you look closely enough at him. As Detective Greer said in 'Bullet + Ballpoint Pen': if you lift up the lid of a jigsaw puzzle... there's an awful lot of broken pieces.

It’s Jack’s fault, is the thing.

Perhaps not. Not _directly_... Not this time. But essentially- Jack could have triggered the locks when Mac told him to, then Barokov’s men would have been cut off from the device. They wouldn’t have made off with it. Phoenix wouldn’t be charged with hunting it down now. They spent _months_ tracking it down the first time... Who knows if they’ll ever catch wind of where it’s gone now, much less before Barokov or whoever he sells to uses it to hurt people.

Essentially, it’s Jack fault that they’re looking at another seventy-two hours - minimum - before they see the outside of headquarters again.

Manhandling Mac into the empty warroom and flicking on the privacy glass may stop Mac from formally complaining to Matty (this time). But it won’t shut him up.

If Jack wants to yell back at Mac, to fight him, the way he had after- If he thinks he can shut Mac down with some mean words - or even his fists? The way he might have back before they were friends... He can try. (Anything would be better than this stone-faced silence. This eerie... calm Mac finds himself railing against, time and time again.)

“And, what, you’ve got _nothing_ to say for yourself?” Mac shouts while he can, at Jack’s back as Jack turns and- And locks the door.

Heart in his throat, Mac nonetheless lets his lips curve into a mocking sneer. “No, ‘ _my bad, hoss_ ’?” he spits, in his scathingest imitation of Jack’s ‘good ol’ boy’ accent. “Huh? Thousands of people could die because _you_ let Barokov just take the device and walk away-”

“And if I hadn’t, his men would have torn you to pieces.”

“I’m a goddamned government agent, Jack,” Mac reminds. Angrier with every second that Jack doesn’t turn back to face him. And with Jack’s patience, as satisfying as it is to that cold, dark part of Mac that - ultimately - he’ll be better off for having let take the wheel. Mac‘s seen Jack wait out targets for hours. “Not a housepet who’s skipped his leash! I don’t need you or anyone questioning my ability to take care of myself. Not here at headquarters, not in my own goddamned home - and definitely not out in the field!”

Finally, Jack shows Mac his profile. Still stone-faced. Still calm. Brown eyes glinting, almost black-

Mac doesn’t let himself acknowledge the chill that curls around his spine and almost hitches his breath.

“What’s it gonna take?” he demands, louder than ever. “What’s it gonna take to get that through your thick, clingy, melodramatic, Cro-Magnon skull-”

And that’s time’s up.

Jack moves. He’s patient... but he’s also human. And he’s fast. He moves, and Mac closes his eyes before Jack’s fist can connect.

Jack moves so fast, in fact, that by the time Mac realizes that he’s not going to attack Mac with his words _or_ his fists, it’s too late. 

One of Jack’s strong arms curls around Mac head - one around Mac’s back, under his shoulders. The scents of leather and of Jack, and of half a dozen other things whose scent Mac associates with the man himself, absent from Mac for these many months since- They envelope Mac as surely as Jack’s embrace.

Mac is caught so unawares that he just... freezes and lets it happen. Lets Jack press Mac’s face into his shoulder and hold him steady. He can feel Jack’s breaths as Jack presses his own face into Mac’s hair, and its like having the turmoil inside of him translated into air - Jack breathes the way Mac feels.

Like he’s broken.

“Get off.”

The words are barely words at first, and Mac’s hardly aware that he’s saying them. But once Mac feels them whisper past his lips, he clutches at them as if at a lifeline.

“Get off of me...”

Jack’s silent throughout - just like he has been throughout everything since that first and final ugly, (awful,) knockdown, Riley-and-Bozer-literally-had-to-drag-Jack-out fight. 

Jack was silent when Mac told Matty that he’ll play nice - he’ll go along with whatever pompous, pedantic, line-toeing ‘wellness’ program the Phoenix Foundation dictates for agents who’ve “suffered special personal tribulations” - but if she ever, _ever_ tries to bench him again for something as inappropriate as not wanting to talk to the team about his _feelings_ , he’s gone. For good.

Jack was silent the day after Bozer officially moved in with Leanna, and he hasn’t brought the issue up since, even though Mac just _knows_ that he has things to say about that. Bozer’s certainly been outspoken, the times that he and Mac have occupied the same room long enough for either of them to get around to speaking about something not mission-related.

Jack was even silent the day Mac blew up at Riley and made her cry. He ignored every dirty (guilty) look Mac threw his way. He passed up every (rightful) opportunity to put Mac back in his place. To come right out with every cutting, honest (hurtful) thing he’d held back that day that he and Mac really went at it.

“ _Get off of me, Jack_ ,” Mac says with more force.

Jack’s been silent through every insult, every bogus accusation, every selfish, childish, absurd thing Mac’s said or done over the last four months. Mac struggles in Jack’s arms, but Jack won’t relent.

He’s known _exactly_ what Mac wants, from the very beginning. 

“Get the fuck off of me!”

“No.”

And _fuck_ him for sounding- For sounding... like that, knowing.

“Jesus, get the fuck _away from me_ ,” Mac yells. He shoves at Jack. He beats at his chest, his arms, open-palmed.

He throws a punch, gets Jack right in the side, and Jack just takes it. Uses the opening Mac gives him to get a good hold on his arm and spin him, wrap both of _his_ arms around Mac from behind - head low, pressed between Mac’s shoulderblades, so that Mac can’t headbutt him to get away.

“Let me go!”

“Not gonna.”

“Wh-What are you- Are you a _child_? Let me go, Jack. I’ll _hurt_ you if I have to.”

“Do your best, brother,” Jack pants. Breathless from exertion or pain, either way, he still sounds dead serious. “But the only way you’re walking out of this room while you’re worked up like this is if I _can’t_.”

So Mac throws the both of them backwards and into a wall.

And when that doesn’t help he screams.

He feels like he’s spent four months screaming.

“I’m not gonna do it, Mac!” Jack screams with him as he flings himself backwards once more, trying to knock Jack loose.

“I’m not letting you go...” he shouts as Mac twists, trying to break his hold. 

And again - “I’m not letting you go...” - as Mac fights for leverage, tries and fails to kick off of the sofa, to push off of a door jamb; to roll them both through the shattered remains of a table. Wrestling Mac, move by move, away from the upperhand.

“ _You’re not your dad_!” he blindsides Mac with just as Mac shakes him off. They’re on the ground, and Jack crawls back over him, pins him, before Mac can so much as recover his breath. “And I’m not Walsh!”

“Stop.”

“I’m not letting you go... and you’re not walking away. Not from me, goddamn it!”

“Stop!”

He bucks Jack over, end over end, and Jack just gets an armlock on him - takes Mac with him. 

“I’m not letting you-”

“ _Stop saying that!_ ”

“Then tell me what the fuck you _want_ me to say!”

It’s _too much_.

Jack’s relentless grip - his arms snaking back around Mac’s torso as soon as Mac goes limp, closing around him like vices. His panting breath, almost a wheeze, joining Mac’s in the otherwise silent room - his pounding heart, beneath Mac’s ear, rivaling a drum, it’s beating so loud.

And when the fight goes out of Mac, Jack curls around him - not to get away or to take advantage of the lapse in Mac’s defense (there’s been nothing for Mac to defend himself against; nothing except this steady, unceasing support) - he does it to plant a gentle kiss on the temple of Mac’s forehead.

Just that.

A kiss.

“ _I want_ -” Mac starts as a shout, high-pitched and raw and terrible - and only getting worse, fading into a whimper. “I want you to say the _truth_!”

“Angus-”

“Say- Say I’m being a fucking brat, okay? Say I’ve been a _fool_. And I can’t- I can’t _cope_ with that... So I’ve finally shown everyone what an ignorant... incompetent, _arrogant_ bastard I am-”

“Oh, Mac.”

“Say that I’ve been _mean_ , Jack,” Mac begs. Because he has. He’s been _unconscionable_. Inconsolable. The way he’d been when his mom-

And this time he doesn’t even have the right. He’s not nine years old anymore. His dad doesn’t want him, but his dad _never_ wanted him. Not how he is. How he _proved_ himself to be, after Mom’s death. So weak and needy and incapable of focusing on the individual task at hand, the one skill his dad has always valued over all else. The ability to focus, to evaluate and to overcome. 

Mac couldn’t overcome losing his mom. Now he can’t overcome finding his dad all wrong. A traitor to his country... A man who tried to kill his own partner, Mac’s boss, - so often and so _well_ that the man’s disappeared almost entirely into his role as Oversight. So well that Oversight was willing to become a ghost in his own agency to keep Mac from finding out the dangerous truth about his own father. 

“Say that I’m not _worth_ it, alright? Just. Just put it out there,” Mac keeps begging. Because, for everything else he’s done - at least until now - he hasn’t had the strength to put it out there himself, in a way that Jack can just confirm it, let him accept it and be done with it.

“You’re the smartest guy I know, Mac...” Jack says instead. “And the best. The bravest. The most _selfless_ -”

God.

“No.”

“But you- Jesus, man. You’ve got the biggest damn heart I’ve ever fucking seen, and I don’t know what to do about it at the _best_ of times-”

“ _No_ ,” Mac almost cries.

“-how to protect it," Jack speaks over him. “You just. God. No one’s worth more to me than you, Mac... I don’t know how else to say that to you. I don’t know how to make it okay that I love you so damned much - we _all_ love you, Mac; so fucking much - and your dad’s just too fucked up to do the same...”

And that’s just-

How can Mac possibly fight _that_?

He can practically feel Jack word’s prying at the splintered edges of the place where his chest just seemed to _cave_ , in that bunker, face to face with his father. When all his efforts, all his hoping - all the years of wishing he could just _know_ the man who was once his hero - had led him to a villain.

Prying and piecing together something Mac would rather leave torn open. Leave empty. He hurts this bad over a man he hadn’t spoken to since _gradeschool_... His family has been his _life_. If he lets this hole inside him heal now - lets their good intentions be the suture to heal it - he can’t fathom what will be left of him the day someone finally rips that bandaid off.

“Jack, please...”

“I’m not gonna give you what you want, Mac,” Jack says finally, once and for all, voice pitching just as terribly as Mac’s as he shudders with emotion. “‘Cause you don’t really want it. You just think it’d be easier.” Then he squeezes Mac tighter. “But nothing about this is gonna be easy, Angus. I’m sorry. I’m so damned sorry, but it’s just not. All I can do is promise you that you don’t have to do it alone, and then keep my promise. That’s all I can do.”

That’s so much more than Mac feels that he deserves. Or can trust, right now. 

But - God - Jack is right. Mac _does_ want that much. To be able to trust again, that not everyone leaves - and that not every leaving is because he was just too difficult, too weird or messed up or _less than_ to make staying worth it.

“Jack...”

“Let me promise you that, Mac," Jack says quietly. “ _Please_. Please let me keep that promise.”

Only moments ago (and an eon) Mac would have waged _war_ against the very idea. He still doesn’t see how letting anyone, even Jack - especially Jack - help him through this hurting won’t just end up hurting him further. 

But there’s an understanding in Jack’s silence, as he just holds Mac. Situates himself more comfortably around Mac now that it’s clear that Mac isn’t going to lash out at him any more or try to get up and run away. He’s professed the love Mac had made himself pretend he couldn’t see every time Jack let Mac rage against him - and with it _forgiveness_. Much more than Mac _knows_ he deserves.

And now Mac can’t imagine anything worse than if tried putting up those pretenses again. He turns his face into Jack’s chest, grabs onto him, and lets go of that cold, dark part of himself that just didn’t know how to ask for anything better.

Then Jack continues holding him as, for the first time in four months - in years, maybe, over his father - Mac cries.

**Author's Note:**

> In this AU, Walsh didn't go bad back in the day... James did. Walsh is Oversight, and has been desperately trying to protect Mac from the truth about his father. This is a moment from the emotional aftermath of that discovery and the run-in Mac and the team have recently had with his father.


End file.
